Exploring The Caribbean Island Of Antigua By Land – Part 1

As nice as a resort might be, after chilling out for the first couple of days, I was itching to head out and see more of Antigua. Oh, and there was also the fact that the Caribbean Challenge with Thomas Cook Airlines (which Lloyd and I were taking part in – with Lloyd being in Barbados) involved showing off different parts of the islands (via photos) so I most definitely needed to see more of Antiguan life.

TIP: When you’re in Antigua, instead of taking taxis everywhere you should rent a car and even if you don’t drive, get a driver with a rented car for a few hours to see the island. While taxis are great for small and one-off trips (like getting to and from the airport), taking taxis everywhere will set you back hundreds of £££s / $$$s a day!

We started off at Nelson’s Dockyard which is the site of an old colonial (you guessed it) dockyard. It still works as a dockyard till date though these days, it’s for the fanciest, most luxurious yachts imaginable. I visited Antigua during the yacht shows so the whole harbour was lit up with these beautiful yachts. When I finally got round to visiting during the day though, it was the end of the yacht show so pretty much all of the yachts had left for their next destination.

Nelson’s dockyard is rather quaint and pretty though in terms of sights, you don’t have to spend longer than 30 minutes doing any sightseeing (you do get a guided). The rest of your time can be spent exploring it’s amazing restaurants and sipping on rum punch in its bars.

Oh and you should definitely visit on a Friday night for the fish fry which is an end-of-the-week party of sorts!

Gotta love that blue Antiguan sky! (Also, it’s a lot more reliable weather-wise than I’m used to in London so I couldn’t get enough of how amazing it is!)

This, by the way, is Admiral’s Inn but there’ll be more on that in another post! 🙂

We left Nelson’s Dockyard for the nearby Interpretation Centre.

If you’re like me, you are a.) Wondering what an Interpretation Centre is and b.) Wondering why you would even want to go to an Interpretation Centre.

Well, thanks to Wikipedia, I found out the answer to the former “An interpretation centreis an institution for dissemination of knowledge of natural or cultural heritage.” The answer to the latter question however, only became more apparent as we walked in and explored more of it…

First off, the view from up here is pretty incredible!

Secondly, and more importantly, the Interpretation Centre is actually one of the best places to go to on the island for a concise history of Antigua. I actually left surprised by how little I’d known about Antigua and the Caribbean islands in general before visiting the Interpretation Centre. For instance, I had no idea that the annual Carnival was set up to celebrate the emancipation of slaves on the islands. Or that Native Americans, although not indigenous, were one of the first inhabitants on the islands…

After a quick history lesson, I set about to see more of that amazing view from the Interpretation Centre, along with the other sites here. See this used to be a fort back in the day and so it still has it’s ruins there till this day.

The view below, by the way is English Harbour where we’d been just before heading for the Interpretation Centre…

Eventually, we said farewell to the interpretation centre and headed off for our next stop! Due to the sheer number of photos I’ve taken, I’ve had to split this post into two otherwise it’d never finish loading so check out the next part here.